When the femur is broken, the leg muscles will involuntarily contract unless traction is applied to the leg. If left to contract involuntarily for a period of time, the muscles will spasm, leading to fibrillation, in which the muscles spastically vibrate beyond the control of the injured individual. This causes complications in treating the broken femur, especially in the case of a complex fracture in which the broken segments of the femur are misaligned, with jagged, broken portions digging into the flesh. Spasms or fibrillation pose a serious threat to the well-being and life of the victim. Large arteries and other blood vessels passing alongside the femur bone are at risk of being severed, which can cause rapid blood loss and even death, sometimes within as little time as two minutes. For this reason, when a paramedic is at the scene of an accident and the accident victim has a broken femur, the leg is quickly placed in traction using a portable traction device.
One prior art traction device that is widely used by paramedic units is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,131. The device disclosed therein utilizes a single pole or brace, extending along the outside of the injured leg. The brace is secured to the leg, above the break, and extends below the foot to a terminal end where a hitch is provided. A tensioning harness is secured to the ankle and the hitch and has tensioning means for pulling the ankle toward the hitch. This places the injured leg in traction and prevents or at least lessens the aforementioned spasms or fibrillation. The brace may be segmented.
Although this prior art device has been well received by paramedics and other medical professionals, it does have some disadvantages. The tensioning harness is secured to the ankle by a cuff that is adjustable through the overlapping of material straps having hook-and-loop fasteners, and it has been found that such a securing system is less than satisfactory, and even inoperable, in inclement weather. Mist, rain, snow, sand and other debris compromises the ability of the user to establish a good connection between the hooks and the loops.
The cuff portions of the prior art devices, including but not limited to the commercial embodiment of the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,708,131, are sized too small for some applications. For instance, if a skier breaks a leg and a prior art traction device must be employed to place the leg in traction, the ankle cuff will be too small to fit around the skier's ski boot. This problem also occurs with construction workers and other laborers wearing large boots , and with hunters or hikers. The hook-and-loop wrap provided in the prior art is neither sufficiently large nor sufficiently adjustable for all applications in which the tensioning harness may need to be employed.
It is also common for the prior art tensioning harness to become lost or entangled in other equipment carried by paramedics or other entities that employ femur traction devices. This is due, in part, to human nature and the tendency for packing away the femur traction device components in a speedy manner rather than a particularly organized manner. If lost, the femur traction device becomes nearly useless, and improvisation is necessary to employ it as it should be employed. If tangled in other equipment, time spent untangling it takes away from time spent treating the patient. Thus, means for keeping the harness in good order and keeping it with the remainder of the femur traction device equipment is needed.
It should also be appreciated that, when placing an injured leg in traction, it might be preferable to fine-tune the degree of tensioning. This is very difficult to do simply through the adjustment of straps on a tensioning harness, as is currently practiced. Therefore, this invention also provides a tension-adjusting device that allows for fine adjustments of the tension established by the traction device, without having to rely upon the adjustment of the length of straps in a tensioning harness.